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World’s Student Christian Federation. | 
{Paraieha Student Relief Series No. 2. 


“OVERHEARD 
IN THE COLLEGES.” 


|. “Aren’t the reports of student destitution in Central 
Europe greatly exaggerated.?” 


‘“No! and they cannot be!’’ is the answer of every responsible 
investigator. Military Missions, Reparation Committees, and Red Cross 
Societies of many different nations, Statesmen like A. J. Balfour, Govern- 
ment Directors of Relief like Hoover and Sir William Goode, High Com- 
missioners in Central Europe all give the same verdict. It is summed 
up in the Report of Mr. W. F. Persons, Director of Organisation, 
League of Red Cross Societies, to. Sir David Henderson,. K.C.B., 
Director-General, April 8th, 1920 :— 

‘‘ There is appalling. misery in the broad belt lying between the 
Baltic and the Black Sea—misery g greater in extent and intensity than 
the modern world has ever before w jitnessed. In this great area, includ- 
ing the new Baltic States, Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, Ukraine, ‘Austria, 
Hungary, Roumania, Montenegro, Albania, Serbia—to say nothing of 
Russia to the East and Armenia to the South—there is generally an abso- 
, lute lack of medicines and sanitary appliances; doctors, nurses, and 
hospital equipment are practically non-existent; food and clothing are 
insufficient to make life itself tolerable, and disease, bereavement and 
suffering are present in practically every household: When this has been 

Ny said and understood the story has been told.’’ 


The students suffer with the rest, but up.to the present have been 
neglected by the various relief agencies. 





as b Isn’t all we can do a mere drop in the bucket.?” 


Would you fancy this argument against relief, if you chanced to be 
the individual, who might be ‘saved from starvation by an effort, even if 
: inadequate. ce a matter of fact, a few Universities, working hard at it, 
have already accomplished a good deal. The first two months of the 

work of our Relief Scheme in Wien has amongst a student population of 
20,000, resulted in :— | 


Daily cocoa and bread breakfast for » ,, 3107 students. 
Clothing outfits - 670 women students. 
* ” a, 167..men students. 

| Students sent abroad for agricultural 
: purposes. | go men 


! | Extra supplies to 3 Student Mensae 
or Homes. 
: Organisation and supply of food for 3 Summer Camps. 


3. “Relief is a mere palliativg: nothing but credit and raw 
materials can restore the economic life of Central 
Europe. What are the Governments doing.?” 


Quite true!. But while Government Reconstruction Schemes get 
under way, the people they are to benefit must be kept alive. Govern- 
ment and humanitarian schemes must supplement each other. : 

Sir William Goode, British Director of Relief, writing under date 
May 1oth, says :— 

‘4 humanitarian link is now being forged in Paris between the 
Allied and Associated Powers, and those powers who remained neutral 
during the war, in order to provide the more destitute countries with 
just enough food to avert starvation, and with some raw materials. This 
attempt to breathe life into otherwise inanimate countries cannot, of 
itself, restore individual initiative or assuage individual suffering. Credits 
by Governments to Governments are necessarily impersonal. In a crisis 
such as this there must be behind the impersonal a living, breathing spirit 
of individual humanitarianism which will bring home to the peoples now 
in despair the conviction that we do not regard them merely as pawns 
on a chess-board of inevitable sacrifice.’’ 


4. “Why don’t the students work. ?” 


A. They do; the great majority are earning all they can. But none 
can support themselves completely. Competition is so great, and unem- 
ployment so universal, that students are foreed to take absurd fees for 
their work. : | 

In Vienna. The bare minimum on which a woman student can live 
(without any allowance whatever for clothes or emergencies) is 500 
crowns per month. The utmost she can earn is 300 crowns per month, 
and few can earn so much. 


In Budapest. The bare minimum on which a student can live (allow- 
ing for only two meals a day, and nothing for clothes) was 1,032 crowns in 
June, 1920, and is now considerably higher: the usual monthly income 
a student can earn is 620 crowns, and 45 % of the wage-earning: students 
have to help support parents or relatives. 42 % of the students are wage- 
earning; 58 % are not; in the vast majority of cases because they cannot 
find employment. There are several hundred thousand unemployed in 
Budapest to-day. ‘ 


Manual labour is impossible for many, because long continued under- 
-nourishment has sapped their strength. Of the first 75 men who volun- 
teered for a wood-cutting Camp in Austria, 29 were rejected as physically 
unfit. 


B, Our Relief Schemes for students are administered with the 
greatest care. No student is helped with food or clothes without the 
strictest investigation of his physical and financial condition, and the pos- 
sibility of his helping himself. We are aiming first and foremost at 
encouraging self-help on sound economic lines. , 


5. “Why don’t they leave the Universities and get out into 
the economic life of the country. ?” | 


Reports received from the Universities show that in every land many 
thousands are doing this very thing, leaving unfinished the courses 
they have begun and starting on other lines. Our Relief Schemes 


include plans for getting students back to the land through agricultural 
training, and other plans for proyiding them with permanent non-profes- 
sional careers. We are avoiding all action which would encourage men 
or women to swell the overcrowded professional classes, or the ranks of 
students who have no chance of future employment. 


But the problem is not a simple one. The Trades Unions are against 
the entrance of the ‘‘ intellectuals ’’ into their ranks. To get a job as 
waiter or barber, a student must be admitted into the Waiters’ or Bar- 
bers’ Union. The country is up against the city. .Farmers refuse to 
employ students as harvesters: foresters refuse to instruct students in 
wood-cutting. The number of unemployed is enormous; the exchange, 
lack of transport, raw material and credit makes everything abnormal. 
When the economic life of a country is completely disorganised ‘‘ to get 
out into it’’ is a difficult process. In the countries of the Old World, 
even in peace time, there was no room for an unskilled half-time worker 
like the student. 


The fact must not be lost sight of that to suppress the University- 
trained man altogether would be a disaster for the economic life of any 
country. Healthy economic functioning demands a certain proportion ‘of 
University-trained men and women, doctors, teachers, engineers, archi- 
tects, sociologists, political economists, ete. 


6. Is it true that there are thousands of foreign students in 
Vienna, Budapest, Prague and Berlin? “Why should 
we feed them.?” 

Ves lity: (Lue, Dut Na BD. 

1. Large numbers of the so-called ‘‘ foreign ’’ students in Vienna 
were not foreign when they began their course. They are Czechs, Poles, 
Jugo-Slavs, etc., who were Austrian subjects before the division of the 
Austrian Empire, and are finishing their course where they began it. In 
Budapest there are many hundreds of Hungarian students, whose homes 
are in territories ceded to other countries: they are completely cut off 
from home through frontier reguldtions; and are worse off than many 
real foreign students. 


2. Many of these ‘‘ foreign ’’ students are from countries which are 
clamouring for doctors and engineers, but in some of which no complete 
medical or engineering faculties exist. In Galician Poland to-day, there 
is only one doctor to every 150,000 inhabitants and 250,000 cases of 
typhus! In Servia and Bulgaria there are no complete medical schools, 
and a terrible need of doctors. 


3. Vienna’s very distress attracts the foreign students to her. 
Students from S.E. Europe and the Balkans are from countries where 
the exchange is bad; they can study in Vienna, where it is even worse, 


but not in France, Switzerland, Britain, or even Germany. 

4. Large numbers of the foreign students in Vienna, Budapest, and 
Berlin are refugees, driven in through war or revolution, e.g., Galician 
or Hungarian Jews. : 


x3 


7. “Why a special effort of students for students? Why 
. not an effort of men and women se men and manent ik 

A. An effort of ‘‘men and women ’’ for ‘‘ men and women ”’’ is 
probably ideal, and capable of making a strong appeal. But we must 
concern ourselves with practical politics : it is too late: for better for 


a 


worse, relief work in Central Europe is stratified, both as regards appeal 
and administration : and to hold up relief work in order to reorganise it 
would mean the murder of hundreds of thousands. The various relief 
missions have already selected the field, or the class, to which they will 
¢ive—orphans, widows, disabled officers, invalid children, etc.. Doctors 
are appealed to for Doctors, Engineers for Engineers, Labourers for 
Labourers, and so forth. Why not students for students? Very careful 
investigation has shown that they are a neglected class. Much, though 
not nearly enough, has been done for children, something for school boys 
and girls, nothing for students over eighteen. 


8. “But students can do so little?” 


Try them and see! Students, though usually poor, have money- 
raising power. A single Dutch student, in two weeks’ work, April, 1920, 
raised nearly £3,000 of goods from various merchants for Vienna 
students. Students in the Universities of the U.S.A., in 1917-18, raised 
well over £300,000 for a Students’ Friendship Fund, expended on 
Prisoners of War, social work amongst soldiers and sailors at home and: 
abroad, etc. The huge German Student Self-Help Association (Allge-. 
meine Studentenausschiisse) has introduced a self-denying ordinance, 
whereby every member whose income. is more than 4oo marks a month: 
shall tax himself 2 per cent. of his income for the benefit of poorer mem- 
bers. This, in English money, means that every student with an income 
of more than £32 per annum would tax himself 13/- for student relief. 
If every student in more fortunate countries would give at this rate, the 
financial side of the problem of student relief would ‘Tapidly be solved ! 


9. Why should the World’s Student Christian Federation 
tackle this job ? 


One of the aims of the Federation is to ‘‘ rarchtn, either sieirexsenta or 
indirectly, those efforts on behalf of students in body, mind, and spirit 
which are in harmony with the Christian purpose.’’ Relief work seems. 
to the Federation a plain Christian duty. Members of the’ Federation 
took a leading part in organising the ‘‘ Prisoners of War”? work on both 
sides, that has had such far- -reaching results. The present homeless, 
fcricce) clothesless condition of students constitutes a call to the Federa- 
tion quite as pressing as the need of the Prisoners of War, and, if 
possible, even closer to its genius. ‘‘ 1 was an hungred, and ye gave 
Me meat; I was a stranger, and ye took Me in; naked, and ye clothed. 
Mei) ie: Tnasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these,. ye have. 
done it unto Me.’ . 


This leaflet is intended for the use of National Student 
Movements and Committees engaged in Student Relief work. It 
is meant to serve as a basis for the production of national Student. 
Relief literature, rather than for general distribution. AM 


WORLD'S STUDENT ‘CHRISTIAN Rete ing ut 
EUROPEAN STUDENT RELIEF. 


JOHN “R.- MOTT, CONRAD HOFFMANN, RUTH ROUSE, 


Chatrman, Executive Secretary, > ©. Publicity Secretary, 
347, Madison Avenue, 18, Avenue de Champel, . . 28,- Lancaster Road, 


New? York City. Geneva, Switzerland. Wimbledon, London, 5.W. 19. 


